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Friday, January 31, 2014

KIEV: A leading Ukrainian opposition activist who vanished for eight days emerged bloodied and badly beaten on Friday, saying his captors cut off an ear and drove nails through his hands before dumping him in a forest.Dmytro Bulatov, a 35-year-old member of the opposition movement involved in street protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, appeared with his face swollen and caked in blood on Ukrainian television after going missing from Kiev on Jan. 22.

Speaking slowly and visibly shaken by his experience, Bulatov said his unknown captors blindfolded and abused him before dumping him in a forest outside the Ukrainian capital, from where he was able to make his way to a nearby village.“My hands ... they crucified me, nailed me, cut my ear off, cut my face,” Bulatov told Ukraine’s Channel 5 television, still wearing his blood-soaked clothes and pointing to holes on his palms. “Thank God I am alive.”“I can’t see well now, because I sat in darkness the whole time,” he said, adding that he was unable to see his captors.Bulatov’s account drew immediate international condemnation, with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton warning Ukrainian authorities that targeting activists “must immediately be stopped.”“I’m appalled by the obvious signs of prolonged torture and cruel treatment” of Bulatov, she said in a statement, calling it another incident in the “continuous deliberate targeting of organizers and participants in peaceful protests.”Amnesty International said the “barbaric act” must be investigated, adding that it is only one of several cases of similar disappearances.The United Nations’ human rights office on Friday also called on Ukraine to launch an independent probe into deaths, kidnappings and torture amid the raging political unrest.The US Embassy in Kiev posted a picture of Bulatov with a blackened gash on his cheek and said that “the government of Ukraine must take full responsibility for the timely investigation, capture, and prosecution of those responsible for this heinous crime.”It further voiced concern over reports of 27 more missing activists, in a statement posted on its official Facebook page.Ukraine’s UDAR (Punch) opposition party leader and former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko said Bulatov was tortured “to scare those who disagree with the regime, to show that it can happen to anyone.”“What they did with Dmytro is an attempt to frighten all citizens,” Klitschko was quoted by his party as saying.In a video of Bulatov made by fellow activist Oleksiy Grytsenko, he said that despite the atrocious torture, he would keep protesting. “They won’t scare us,” he said.Police questioned Bulatov’s friends and said Friday that a probe has been launched into the abduction, but complained that the victim was not helping the investigation.“Unknown individuals hit him on the head with a blunt object and stuffed him into a car” on Jan. 22, the interior ministry said.On the ministry’s database of wanted persons, Bulatov was listed as on the run from police and subject for arrest on charge of “mass riots.”Ukraine’s deputy chief investigator Oleg Tatarov complained at a briefing that Bulatov’s friends took him for medical treatment instead of calling police to the scene right away.“Nobody wants to give information, nobody wants to cooperate,” he said.Tatarov suggested that the abduction “could have been staged with the goal of provoking a negative reaction from the public.”Bulatov’s disappearance came as the two-month protests in Ukraine escalated into deadly clashes with police. It caused great concern because it followed similar cases of apparent abductions of prominent activists from the opposition protests in central Kiev.One of the activists, Yuriy Verbytsky, was found dead in a forest while another, Igor Lutsenko, survived a severe beating and was hospitalized.Bulatov is a leading member of Avtomaidan, a loose group of drivers who have held protest motorcades near Yanukovych’s sprawling country estate in Mezhygirya outside Kiev and were instrumental in organizing the protests in Kiev.This month, its members have come under immense pressure from the authorities and some have gone into hiding or left the country.Ukraine’s protests erupted in November after Yanukovych scrapped an integration deal with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Kiev’s historical master Moscow.

RIO DE JANEIRO – A contingent of Brazilian Federal Police fired shots at the Indian residents of a community in the northeastern state of Bahia, the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) said on Wednesday.

The violence took place after a protest by members of the Tupinamba tribe against the installation of a Federal Police outpost on the Sempre Vinca plantation, land that the Indians claim as their own, a CIMI spokesperson told Efe.

Brazil’s Indian affairs agency, FUNAI, said in 2009 that the site of the prospective police base is “traditional indigenous territory.”

But FUNAI has yet to officially demarcate the extent of the Tupinamba lands, which means the tribe cannot secure official recognition of its rights over the territory, CIMI said in a statement.

The violence at Sempre Vinca, which began after midnight Tuesday, represents “the return of the dictatorship in Brazil,” the principal of the local Indian school, Magnolia Jesus da Silva, told Efe.

“Twenty-five men fired their guns and hurled grenades until 4:00 in the morning,” she said. “Today, 60 more police are arriving to continue with the massacre.”

BANGUI, Central African Republic: Rudimentary weapons taken from Christian extremist militias by French troops in the capital of the Central African Republic were piled up on the ground, near the body of a young man whose ears were ripped off.“He was a Muslim from here, named Abaka. They killed him in the courtyard of his house,” a Christian neighbor, Benjamin, told AFP.“They” referred to “anti-balaka” (anti-machete) vigilantes who fiercely target Muslims in Bangui on the pretext of hunting down ex-rebels from the Seleka coalition. Sporadic shots could be heard Thursday around the PK-5 business hub of the capital, where numerous Muslim-owned shops attract looters and anti-balaka forces, who are kept at bay by armed Muslims and remaining Seleka forces. But night and day, residents from the Muslim minority, like Abaka, are cut down by anti-balaka forces armed with machetes, hammers, slings and spades.“We need to cover the body,” said a soldier of France’s Operation Sangaris, consisting of 1,600 troops who work alongside an African Union peacekeeping force currently 5,500 strong. About 20 French soldiers sought to prevent scores of people from looting the property of the murdered Muslim. But several looters were already busy.“Don’t come close, stay where you are and back off,” a soldier yelled at a youth, but when the soldier stepped just three meters away, the looter came past, carrying a wooden door, while another followed with a hosepipe. Though few in number, the soldiers were holding dozens of youths at bay, half-hidden by tall grass behind the dead Muslim’s property. It was impossible to tell whether they were anti-balaka forces, would-be looters or hooligans.“This isn’t normal,” Benjamin protested. “Sangaris wants to stop us from looting!“By the roadside, the owner of a shop named “L’Arche de Noe” (“Noah’s Ark“) took advantage of a few moments’ peace to shut up his premises with a padlock, but the curious kept gathering in their hundreds.“We won’t tell you ten times,” a soldier warned the new arrivals. “Get over to the other side of the road.”Coming from the airport zone, where the French troops and the AU’s MISCA force are based, an African military ambulance sped by with a wailing siren. Warning shots rang out as French soldiers fired over the heads of the crowd. A score of French troops backed up by two armored vehicles on Thursday threatened looters in the Yangato district near the airport with the use of force unless they departed.“Disperse or we will use force against you,” the platoon commander announced by megaphone to a crowd seeking to pillage Muslim property. “Any man who commits extortion is an enemy of the peace.”The threat was affective, though determined looters lingered, waiting for the French troops to leave. Inter-religious violence has claimed thousands of lives and displaced a million people in the population of 4.6 million, yet such clashes are unprecedented in the poor, landlocked country. They erupted when former strongman Michel Djotodia, brought to power by Seleka forces in March last year, proved incapable of reining in his fighters, whose atrocities against Christians prompted the emergence of the anti-balaka and a spiral of violence and hatred. In one district lay the body of a young Christian, killed according to local people because anti-balaka fighters mistook him for a Muslim.

“He looked like a Muslim with his curly hair and prayer beads around his wrist,” witness Victor said. The dead man’s legs, sticking out from under the cloth that covered him, were deeply cut above the ankles, “to make the blood flow faster,” according to one commentator.“This can’t go on. Things are getting out of hand. It must stop,” Victor said softly. The wife of the victim and one of his sisters were weeping. “I told him not to go out,” cried the bereaved spouse, throwing her arms up to heaven. Relatives and neighbors put the body on a cart and embarked on a slow funereal procession. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported Thursday that in Bangui, “our teams are treating large numbers of people for injuries that are the result of extreme violence including maimings from attacks and lynchings.” “Last week we treated 200 people... for violence-related injuries, 90 of whom needed lifesaving surgery, MSF said in a statement, adding that it planned to extend its medical and humanitarian work into the interior, “where our emergency teams report that some villages remain deserted and people are terrorized.”The new interim president, Catherine Samba Panza, has appealed for hundreds more troops and a full United Nations “peacekeeping operation.”The UN Security Council responded on Tuesday with a resolution giving a planned European Union contingent of 600 men a mandate to use “all necessary force,” while also authorizing an asset freeze and travel bans on the ringleaders of groups blamed for atrocities.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

A man arrested for public indecency after he stripped naked and took photos of himself on a JR train in Kanazawa last September was found guilty and given a suspended sentence.
According to the Kanazawa District Court, Masatoshi Komai, 22, who runs a restaurant in Takaoka City, Toyama Prefecture, undressed on a train bound for Kanazawa and took some photos of himself during the brief stop at Kanazawa Station. The photos went viral on Twitter.
Komai told the court he did it as a prank for his friends, NTV reported.
The presiding judge said: “It was a shameless act and there can be no extenuating circumstances, even if it was a ridiculous prank. It also affected the train service.”
However, the judge noted that Komai had shown remorse and sentenced him to six months in prison, suspended for three years.

NEW DELHI: An Indian female politician and activist has said rape victims may have invited attacks by their clothes and behavior, fueling a national debate over a series of incidents of sexual violence against women.Asha Mirje, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader in western Maharashtra state, questioned at a meeting on Tuesday why a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was gang-raped on a bus in Delhi in 2012 was out late at night.

The student died of her injuries and thousands of people took to the streets in nationwide protests against the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in the world’s largest democracy. Mirje, who is a member of the state women’s commission, said in reference to the Delhi assault: “Did Nirbhaya really have go to watch a movie at 11 in the night with her friend?”“Nirbhaya,” a Hindi word meaning “fearless,” has been widely adopted by the Indian media as a name for the victim.She also commented on the gang rape of a photojournalist who was on assignment at a disused mill in Mumbai last year, asking why the victim had gone to such an isolated place. “Rapes take place also because of a woman’s clothes, her behavior and her presence at inappropriate places,” she said.Women must be “careful,” she said, and think if they are inviting assault. Sexual violence has become a huge social and political issue since the Delhi rape and India toughened laws on sex crimes in March last year. Public anger over the poor state of women’s safety in Delhi was one reason that the ruling Congress Party was wiped out in local elections in the city last month.Mirje’s party belongs to the Congress-led national coalition government and her comments caused an immediate stir, with several television reports pouring scorn on her.“Every time such a statement is made by a public figure it justifies rape,” Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, a lobby group, told Reuters.“It’s unconscionable that people in public posts make such remarks.”While Mirje is thought to be the first senior female public figure to make such comments about the Delhi rape, other members of commissions looking after women’s affairs have made similar remarks about less high-profile attacks.“Mirje is reflecting what is a much larger problem. There are many others who hold such views,” Krishnan said.Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, initially dismissed a gang rape in her state in 2012 as a fabricated incident aimed at tarnishing her government.Assaults have tarnished the reputation of a country that has enjoyed growing prosperity in the past decade and is modernising fast. Still, Mirje’s comments were a reminder that conservative and traditional mores are still deeply held by many of its 1.2 billion people, women as well as men.In the most recent case involving a foreigner, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in the back-packers’ district of Delhi last month by men she asked for directions to her hotel.

BEIRUT: Besieged since June, nearly 20,000 people in Damascus’ Yarmuk Palestinian camp are so desperate for food that many eat stray animals, and some women have resorted to prostitution, according to residents.
“Many here have slaughtered and eaten cats and dogs, and even a donkey,” said Yarmuk resident Ali, who was a university student when Syria’s revolt erupted in 2011. “One man who killed a dog couldn’t find any meat to eat on its body, because even the dogs are starving,” he told AFP. “What was unimaginable a few months ago is normal now.”When war spread to areas of Damascus in the summer of 2012, thousands of people from other parts of the capital fled to Yarmuk, swelling its population further.Yarmuk soon became a war zone too, as Syrians taking up arms against Bashar Assad’s regime moved into the camp. In June, the army imposed a total blockade on Yarmuk, which covers an area of just over 2 sq. km.“The situation is so desperate that women are selling their bodies to men who stocked up food before the siege was imposed, for just a cup of rice or bulgur,” said Ali. “Imagine the feeling of a father unable to feed his children, as they wail from hunger,” he added.Seventy-eight people, including 25 women and three children, have died as a result of the shortages. Of these, 61 died in the past three months.

KABUL – Six Afghan police were shot and killed Monday and another was wounded by one their comrades at a checkpoint in the eastern province of Herat, a police official told Efe.

The slaying occurred at mid-morning in the Gulran district, and after shooting his comrades the police officer escaped to join the Taliban, according to the official who preferred to remain anonymous.

Security forces are hunting the fugitive, the official said.

Such insider attacks have occurred with some frequency over the past two years – including more than 50 in 2012 – and the targets have often been international NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan.

Taliban rebels tend to claim responsibility for these attacks, which are launched by their combatants who have infiltrated the ranks of Afghan security forces.

The conflict in Afghanistan has entered one of its bloodiest phases since the U.S. invasion that brought down the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001, and at a time when the complete withdrawal of NATO troops is scheduled for the end of 2014.

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican government has signed an agreement with the vigilante groups that spread across the western state of Michoacan to fight drug traffickers, opening the way for the organizations to gain legal status.

The agreement, which was signed in the city of Tepalcatepec on Monday, calls for the “self-defense groups” to be incorporated into the Rural Defense Corps regulated by the Organic Law of the Mexican Army and Air Force.

“These corps are temporary and will be under the command of the authority established under the applicable legal regulations,” the Government Secretariat said in a statement.

Self-defense group leaders will have to submit membership lists, which will be evaluated and registered by the Defense Secretariat, to join the corps.

Rural Defense Corps units are legally part of the army and air force, and they are made up of volunteers under the command of active-duty officers.

The units’ mission, according to the law, is to “cooperate with the troops in activities being carried out, when they are asked to by the military command.”

The agreement signed by the government and the vigilante groups opens the way for the organizations’ members to join municipal police forces so they can help protect their communities, “as long as they follow the law and are approved by the city council.”

The agreement requires self-defense group members to register their weapons with the Defense Secretariat, while security officials must provide the groups with the equipment and transportation needed to do their jobs.

Measures will be taken so that self-defense group members arrested on arms charges and placed on probation “can report in the state of Michoacan, without having to go to other federal entities,” the agreement says.

Commissioner for Security and Development in Michoacan Alfredo Castillo, who was recently named to his post, Michoacan Gov. Fausto Vallejo and the leaders of the different community self-defense groups operating in the state signed the agreement.

“We are all happy, all the leaders and all the members of the self-defense groups,” Hipolito Mora, leader of the self-defense group in La Ruana and founder of Michoacan’s vigilante movement, told Grupo Milenio.

The first community self-defense groups were formed in Michoacan in February 2013 to fight the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel.

Los Caballeros Templarios, which was founded in December 2010 by former members of the Familia Michoacana cartel, deals in both synthetic drugs and natural drugs.

The federal government deployed soldiers and police in Michoacan on Jan. 13 in an effort to end the wave of violence in the state.

PANAJI: Indian police said Tuesday they had arrested a man in the tourist state of Goa for allegedly raping a four-year-old Iranian girl holidaying with her mother.Goan police arrested the 32-year-old man on Monday after the alleged attack on the girl on Jan. 22 in the northern village of Arpora, where he lived and the Iranians were staying, police inspector Paresh Naik said.The girl told her mother about the incident on Monday prompting her to lodge a police complaint. “Police began search operations immediately and nabbed him,” despite the man's attempts to escape on learning of the complaint, Naik said.

MANILA: Ten Philippine police officers have been suspended for running a secret prison where jailors wearing wigs and masks beat and abused inmates, the government said Tuesday. The police officers played a “wheel of torture” game to have fun and punish criminal suspects during interrogations, including bouts of punching named after boxing star Manny Pacquiao, human rights officials and activists said Tuesday.

Criticizing the Philippine National Police, the Commission on Human Rights and global rights organization Amnesty International demanded the prosecution of the suspects and that the facility be shut down.“The torture happens at time of arrest, a few days later, and every time the officers become intoxicated, or when they are forcing the inmates to admit to a crime,” Commission spokesman Mark Cebreros told AFP.“According to one of the complainants, the officers wear wigs and masks. There is a terror effect,” he said. The torture had been going on since February last year, Cebreros said. The prison, which is not in the official list of Philippine police detention facilities, is a converted house in a gated residential community in Binan town just outside of Manila. It is run by an intelligence unit of the Binan police, Cebreros added. Its officers spun a “roulette” wheel to pick among a list of tortures to be meted out, he said. One punishment, code-named “Manny Pacman” after the Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao, has an officer continuously punching an inmate for 20 seconds. Another had a prisoner hung upside down, like a bat, for 30 seconds, Cebreros said. Investigators have seized the painted wheel and a brown woman’s wig as evidence as they carry out a criminal investigation, Cebreros said. The officers face life in prison if convicted of torture, he added.

Pakistan’s air force launched the airstrikes in North Waziristan after the Taleban claimed responsibility for deadly attacks against security forces there and elsewhere. There were conflicting claims about who was killed in the airstrikes, which began late Monday and continued into early Tuesday. A military official said the strikes killed 40 insurgents, while residents said civilians were among the dead. Latifur Rehman, a provincial disaster management spokesman, said Saturday the strikes displaced 6,000 families, but half of them had gone back to their homes. Rehman said authorities were making arrangements to provide shelter and food to those affected. A tribal prominent elder, Gul Saleh Khan, said more than 70,000 people had left their homes. He said people were still fleeing to nearby towns, villages and cities.“We were sleeping at our home when the army suddenly started the airstrikes just before midnight on Monday,” Khan said. “We quickly moved to a farm field with women and children, and other people also spent that night under the sky.”Khan said he arrived in the northwestern city of Peshawar with his family on Tuesday. Local resident Raham Nawaz said many had to leave their homes due to fears of a full-fledged military operation.“The government should have issued a warning before dropping bombs in our villages,” Nawaz said. He said his family and other relatives were living at a school, miles away from their town of Mir Ali. Resident Salim Khan said people continued to flee Saturday. He urged the government to making public warnings ahead of such airstrikes.“How we can go back to our homes when we don’t know what will happen tomorrow?” Khan asked. Angered over the increasing violence, people are pressuring the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to tackle the issue of militancy aggressively. Sharif long has supported a policy of negotiating with militants. The Pakistani Taleban said earlier this week that they would be interested in peace talks but only if the government proved it was sincere and had enough “power,” a reference to the perception that the army wields the real power in Pakistan. Pakistan has carried out several offensives against the Taleban in other tribal regions, but North Waziristan has largely been spared

KOLKATA, India: A 20-year-old Indian woman said she was gang-raped on the orders of a village council because she fell in love with a man from a different ethnic group, police said Thursday.Twelve suspects and the head of the council have been arrested for the Monday night attack, police said. The woman told police that she lost count of how many men raped her. She was hospitalized Thursday in serious condition.

Television footage showed the woman, her face covered by scarves, being led into a hospital with an IV tube in her arm.TV news reports said the woman is a member of an ethnic tribal group and the man is a Muslim from a neighboring village. The man visited the woman’s village, Subalpur, on Monday to propose marriage, but was caught by other villagers, and the man and the woman were tied to a tree while the village council decided their fate, the reports said.Police official C. Sudhakar said the village council ordered the man and woman to each pay a fine of 25,000 rupees ($400). The man’s relatives were able to pay, but when the woman’s family said they were too poor, the council ordered the gang-rape, police said.

DUBAI: For the third year in a row, a debutant won the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon as teenager Tsegaye Mekonnen Asefa led an Ethiopian whitewash in the emirate on Friday.The 18 year-old caused a major surprise, running 2 hours, 04 minutes and 32 seconds in his first marathon, to break the unofficial world junior record by 95 seconds and record the second fastest time ever seen in the Dubai Marathon.

The second and third placed athletes also achieved world-class times of sub 2:06 with fellow Ethiopians Markos Geneti and Girmay Birhanu finishing in 2:05:13 and 2:05:49 respectively.As expected the women’s race was also dominated by Ethiopians, who took the first nine places. Surprisingly Mula Seboka beat favorites Meselech Melkamu and Meseret Hailu to romp home in 2:25:01 and collect the $200,000 first prize. Melkamu followed in second place with 2:25:23, Firehiwot Dado was third in 2:25:53 with Hailu fourth in 2:26:20.“The pace was changing a lot during the first half and I think with an even pace I could have run faster,” said Tsegaye Mekonnen. “But of course I’m very happy and proud of my performance. I had no idea about the World Junior Record so this is a bonus for me.”The men’s race began very fast with split times that were well inside the world record of 2:03:23 established by Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang in Berlin in 2013. A group of around 20 athletes passed 10km in 29:14 and then reached the half way mark in 61:37. However at that stage the pace had already dropped to around 2m, 58 secs to 3m per kilometers. This was not fast enough for Kipsang’s world record, which was soon out of reach.However, with a new unofficial World Junior Record (the IAAF does not not officially list junior records for the marathon) and the second best time for the event in fifteen years, the men’s race once again underlined the pace of what is one of the fastest courses in world marathon running.For Seboka, who finished 11th in Dubai two years ago and subsequently outside of the money, the richest prize available in international marathon running will make a huge difference.“I will partly use this to support my parents and some poor people back home,” said the diminutive Ethiopian. “I will have to speak to my husband about what we do with the other part of it.”In the 10km Road Race, victory in the men’s division went to John Ndugu of Kenya (28 min, 56 secs) with Feysa Dejene Amosha of Ethiopia in second (28 min, 58 secs) and Ihya Ben-Youssef of Morocco in third (29 min, 32 secs). The women’s race saw victory go to Gladys Jemaiyo (33m:40 secs) of Kenya as her compatriot Sheila Jeptoo Rono (35 min, 03 secs) and Selam Wale Mihret of Ethiopia (35 min, 44 secs) claimed second and third respectively.

A 2-month-old Chihuahua with dyed pink fur nicknamed "Candy" was found with a fractured bone in the street by a Good Samaritan in East Palo Alto, and now, the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA is trying to find a nice quiet, home for her.

Spokesman Scott Delucchi said X-rays showed the pup has a hairline fracture of the right rear tibia, an injury she likely got from jumping off a bed or couch or from someone stepping on her. He also said that staff bathed the dog and tried to get her pink dye off, to no avail. He said no one can figure out what kind of chemicals were used. She was found Jan. 13.

"It's not unusual to dye a dog," Delucchi said, citing the plethora of X-treme grooming sites out there and that fact that dying a pet typically shows some level of care and attachment to a pet. "But this is pretty wierd."

Delucchi can't figure out if the dog is missing, or abandoned. But either way, he'd love for Candy to find a nice quiet home to live in.

The shelter is considering potential adopters at this time and interested foster parents or adopters should call (650) 340-7022, ext. 382. Owners of missing pets should visit the the intake facility at 12 Airport Blvd., San Mateo, to look at the stray animals on site and also file a Lost Animal report.

Police: Small dog fatally stabbed during burglary

PHOENIX - Phoenix police say a family returned home to find their residence trashed and their small dog fatally stabbed.

Police say the suspect or suspects involved in Wednesday's break-in found a sword in the house and used it to stab the 3-year-old Shih Tzu numerous times. The dog was in its kennel at the time, and police say he posed no threat.

The family took the dog to the vet but its injuries were so extensive it had to be put down.

Police say the suspect or suspects also punched holes in walls and dumped liquids from the refrigerator around the house. They also stole electronic equipment and clothes. sample picture

CAIRO: Masked gunmen riding on motorcycles opened fire at a police checkpoint in central Egypt early on Thursday, killing five policemen and wounding two, the Interior Ministry said.No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Egypt has seen a sharp rise in drive-by shootings and attacks targeting police and the military in the aftermath of the popularly-backed coup last July in which the army ousted Islamist President Muhammad Mursi.

The most prominent attack was a failed assassination attempt on the interior minister in Cairo in September and the December suicide car bombing that targeted a security headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, leaving nearly 16 dead, most of them policemen.In Thursday’s attack, assailants on two motorcycles and armed with automatic weapons opened fire on the police checkpoint in the el-Wassta district in the province of Bani Suief, south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, according to a statement from the ministry.The gunmen then fled the scene, said two security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.The attack came days before Egyptians mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising that toppled longtime authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak.Egypt has experienced bouts of political violence since Mubarak’s 2011 ouster but attacks targeting police and the military increased after the coup that ousted Mursi.The military-backed government has blamed the Muslim Brotherhood group, from which Mursi hails, for the attacks, and designated it as a terrorist organization. The group has denied the accusations as baseless.An Al-Qaeda-inspired group called Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, or the Champions of Jerusalem, has claimed responsibility for most of the recent attacks, saying they aimed to avenge the killings of Mursi’s supporters in the months-long heavy security crackdown on protesters demanding his reinstatement and denouncing the coup.Islamists have announced plans for escalating the protests in the coming days while Egypt’s Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim has vowed to confront any act of violence with lethal force.

Saudi football fans were taken by surprise on Tuesday when a group of American women turned up at the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh to watch the football match between Al-Nasr and Shabab.

According to press reports, the group of women included senior consultants of US congressmen. The Americans were allowed to enter the stadium after Prince Faisal bin Turki, president of Al-Nasr Club, received a letter from the Shoura Council stating that the women were interested in attending the match. Some of the women were holding yellow jerseys of Al-Nasr. The news was a big hit on social networking sites because women are not allowed to enter stadiums across the Kingdom to watch football matches. It also prompted many Saudi men and women to ask the government to lift the ban on Saudi women entering stadiums to watch football and other matches. “Why do the authorities allow foreign women to enter stadiums while they deny Saudi women the same privilege,” one person asked. Al-Nasr Club and the Presidency of Youth Welfare organized the VIP lounge for the American women to watch the match. “The move was aimed at impressing the Americans with the Kingdom’s advanced sports facilities,” said a presidency official. Sulaiman Al-Yousuf, manager of King Fahd Stadium, said the presidency instructed the stadium management to allow the women to watch the football match.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

GAZA: Israel killed two Gaza gunmen in an airstrike on Wednesday, blaming one of them for firing rockets across the border during former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s funeral last week. Palestinian residents said the dead men belonged to Islamic Jihad, an armed faction that has sometimes defied efforts by the Gaza Strip’s Hamas government to keep truces with Israel. Islamic Jihad claimed one man, Ahmed Al-Za’anin, as its own, without immediately commenting on the other’s affiliation.

But Israel’s military, confirming the airstrike in Beit Hanoun, said Za’anin was a former Islamic Jihad member who had joined the more secular Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP did not immediately respond. Za’anin had carried out numerous attacks, the military said, including the launch of rockets into southern Israel as Sharon was being buried there last week in a ceremony attended by US Vice President Joe Biden and other foreign dignitaries. There were no casualties in that salvo. Za’anin and the second gunman, his relative, were sitting in a parked car when it was hit by the missile, locals said.

VERACRUZ, Mexico – Seven police officers have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping of a former contestant on the “La Voz Mexico” television program who died last weekend at the hands of a group of criminals, officials said Tuesday.

The seven cops participated in the Jan. 7 kidnapping of Gibran David Martiz Diaz and one of his friends, Sergio Martinez, 17, Veracruz state Attorney General Amadeo Flores said.

The officers, who allegedly turned the young men over to a gang of criminals, were accused of abuse of authority, failure to fulfill a legal duty and coercion, the AG told Mexican media.

“On the basis of the inquiries made into ... the disappearance of these young men ... the Attorney General’s Office found evidence of deeds considered to be crimes that may have been committed by seven members of the public security forces,” Flores said.

After conducting interviews of witnesses and the police officers themselves, the latter were arrested and brought before a judge to respond to the accusations against them.

The two young men, according to the complaint presented by relatives, were taken by force from their apartment in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, by armed people dressed in state police uniforms and traveling in three state police vehicles.

Police found the bodies of both victims last weekend in the city of Huatusco after a shootout in which two suspects were killed.

Martin Diaz and Martinez, according to ballistics tests, were murdered by the two criminals before they themselves were gunned down by police, the AG said.

BAGHDAD: Iraq on Tuesday announced the execution of 26 men convicted of “terrorism,” including a high-profile anti-Al-Qaeda militia commander whose arrest in 2009 prompted fierce street battles in Baghdad.

The executions come despite widespread international condemnation of Iraq’s use of capital punishment, and were announced barely a week after Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki publicly rebuked Ban Ki-moon over the UN chief’s call for a moratorium.“The Justice Ministry carried out the executions of 26 (men) convicted of crimes related to terrorism on Sunday,” a ministry statement said, adding that all of those put to death were Iraqis. It said that the ministry would “continue to carry out sentences against those who have been condemned, after the final decision has been made,” despite persistent international calls for Iraq to declare a moratorium on its use of capital punishment.“All 26 who were executed carried out brutal terrorist crimes against the Iraqi people, and they were tried and condemned, and the verdict was approved by the presidency,” Justice Minister Hassan Al-Shammari said. Iraq executed at least 169 people last year, according to an AFP tally based on statements from the Justice Ministry and reports from officials. It was the highest figure since the US-led invasion of 2003, and placed it third in the world for the number of executions after only China and Iran.